This week the Trump administration has persuaded a U.S. appeals court to reconsider a decision to ban chlorpyrifos. The court will review former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s March 2017 refusal to ban the widely-used pesticide, according to Reuters.

“Pruitt’s ruling reversed a 2015 Obama administration plan to extend a 2000 ban on the pesticide that had covered most household settings. The appeals court had, in a 2-1 decision last Aug. 9, directed the EPA to ban chlorpyrifos within 60 days,” Reuters
reports.

Now an 11-judge panel will reconsider this case. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told Reuters it’s seeking a rehearing because the appeals court lacked jurisdiction to review Pruitt’s ruling and ban the pesticide[1].

My legislation bans the use and stockpile of Chlorpyrifos, an extremely harmful pesticide that former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt eliminated by reversing an Obama-era ban. The New
York Times highlighted in a July 2nd, 2017 article, “he (Pruitt) reversed a ban on the use of a pesticide that the EPA’s own scientists have said is linked to damage of children’s nervous systems[2]”.
Additionally, H.R. 230 was included in in the Food Policy Action Network’s sixth annual Scorecard, which is responsible for “covering votes and proposed bills across the food system in 2017…co-sponsorships are accurately reflected in the Member’s record on
Food Policy”

According to reports, on March 9th of 2017, Mr. Pruitt met with a pesticide manufacturer for 25 minutes to reconsider an Obama-era ban on the use of Chlorpyrifos and promptly reversed the ban. This is a clear example of Administrator Pruitt kowtowing
to powerful companies that trample on our collective health and exposes children to toxic materials all in the name of profits.

Many studies have linked prenatal Chlorpyrifos exposures to autism and related disorders. For example, University of California, Davis researchers found that women in the second trimester who lived near fields treated with Chlorpyrifos had children that
were 3.3 times more likely to have autism.[3] Additionally, in a long-term study from 1997 to 2004 by Columbia Center for
Children’s Environmental Health – and funded by grants from EPA and the National Institutes of Health – “results showed that higher prenatal CPF [Chlorpyrifos] exposure, as measured in umbilical cord blood plasma, was associated with decreases in cognitive
functioning on two different WISC-IV [Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, 4th edition] indices, in a sample of urban minority children at 7 years of age.”[4]

Finally, EPA research indicates Chlorpyrifos, which is in the same family as Sarin gas, can lead to cholinesterase inhibition in humans with high exposures. In other words, this pesticide can overstimulate the nervous system causing nausea, dizziness, confusion,
and at very high exposures (e.g., accidents or major spills), respiratory paralysis and even death. Occupational exposure to Chlorpyrifos is a concern to the EPA and current Chlorpyrifos labels require workers handling and applying Chlorpyrifos to wear additional
personal protective equipment (e.g. chemical resistant gloves, coveralls, and respirators), and restricting entry into treated fields from twenty-four hours up to five days.

Our legislation, the Ban Toxic Pesticides Act of 2019, bans this harmful pesticide by cancelling current EPA registration and prohibiting any future registration of pesticides that contain Chlorpyrifos. Join me in protecting public health
and ending the Trump Administration’s assault on our public health and the environment.

If you have any questions or would like to co-sponsor this important legislation, please contact Jacob Hochberg on my staff at Jacob.Hochberg@mail.house.gov. Thank you for your consideration.